Making stuff up
Published December 1, 2016
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, December 1, 2016.
A man who traffics in made-up news recently was tracked down by a real reporter.
After initially declining an interview when approached at his front door in suburban Los Angeles, Jestin Coler, the owner of Denverguardian.com, agreed to talk to NPR.
Among his body of work is a 2014 exposй on people who were using food stamps to buy marijuana in Colorado. The report “quoted” an angry Denver resident, a marijuana shop owner and a U.S. Department of Agriculture official.
And not one word of it was true. But enough people took the bait that a Colorado legislator filed a bill to stop marijuana purchases with food stamps.
More recently, other fake stories have seeped in the mainstream, especially during the presidential campaign. One reported that the pope had endorsed Donald Trump and another that Hillary Clinton was using a body double.
Making matters worse is the president-elect’s troubling indifference toward facts. Trump tweeted this week that he would have won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College vote if millions of people hadn’t cast ballots illegally. The news site Politico traced Trump’s claims to an “ultra-right-wing conspiracy website” called Infowars, which also alleges that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged. And that Hillary Clinton is a “demon from hell.”
You can’t make this stuff up. (Well, apparently, you can.)
Some say the fake news issue is itself a form of fake news — overblown and hypocritical. They point to instances over the years when professional journalists contrived stories (Stephen Glass of the New Republic and Jayson Blair of The New York Times come to mind). They have a point; traditional media at times do fall short. But such cases are exceptions, not the rule. By contrast, the sole mission of the fake news industry is to make things up, for political gain or profit. For instance, fake news on Facebook profits from the number of clicks it delivers. “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide,” which Jestin Coler’s company also produced, was pure fantasy. But it attracted half a million Facebook shares.
“The people wanted to hear this,” Coler told NPR. “So all it took was to write that story.”
Coler, a Democrat, claims he is creating fake news to bring attention to the problem of fake news. (If you want to believe that.)
What does seem clear is that there is a problem. Increasingly, more Americans can’t seem to agree on facts, much less opinions. Even if such stories are not fully accepted as real, they can create confusion — and enmity toward legitimate fact-checkers. University of Connecticut philosophy professor Michael P. Lynch calls it “the manure that makes the seeds of doubt and credulity grow.”
As for ideology, this isn’t about left and right. It’s about right and wrong. Fake news is frightfully easy to create and we’re frightfully easy to mislead. A Stanford University study involving middle school, high school and college students in 12 states found that those students struggled to distinguish real news items from counterfeit ones.
That’s reason to worry. If worse comes to worse, and real news and fantasy continue to blur, we could be in serious trouble. And that’s a fact.
http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-making-stuff-up/article_f50fae7a-aff0-5b43-8209-d92db84f07ce.html
December 1, 2016 at 10:28 am
Norm Kelly says:
If you find a story on FaceBook or Twitter that claims to be news, and you believe it, it's your own darn fault. You should know better. Facebook and twitter are for anything BUT news. Posting pictures of what you had for breakfast, and commenting about your neighbor having too many blow-up holiday decorations, maybe. But NEWS? Never. Shame on you for thinking any of it could be true.
The PROBLEM comes when outlets that claim to be NEWS media knowingly run false, fake, made up stories. Places like NBC (all varieties) that want people to believe they report news are what creates the problem for people being able to tell what's real & what's not. If you see a story on any version of NBC, should you automatically disbelieve? YES! NBC is a major player in the fake news business, and have proven themselves unreliable and untrustrworthy. It's their own fault for knowingly making up stuff.
Then there's comedians like Dan Blather! Purposely, knowingly, lied about a made-up story about George Bush, but ran with it anyway. And that story propagated because it came from a supposedly reliable news source. Except, once again, it turns out a media outlet was used for political purposes based solely on the political ideology of the 'reporter' as well as the media outlet.
When some bonehead posts bogus information on a non-news, everything-is-made-up, website like facebook or a twit comes out that is bogus, it's your fault for putting any stock in it. After all, the nickname is FAKEBOOK! Nuff said. But when it comes to a supposed NEWS outlet making stuff up, forcing a story, reporting half-truths, there is NO EXCUSE! Remember when the latino man shot the black hoody-wearing youth in Florida? Eventually the latino male was described as a white man by some supposed NEWS outlet. Was that an NBC joke? Well, NBC is a joke, but the report wasn't. And wasn't it NBC that cut out part of the police recording trying to make it seem like the 'white' man was referring to the 'perp' as a black youth? But it was actually the cop ASKING if the 'perp' was black. The 'white' man NEVER mentioned skin-color. Yet, some fake news outlet ran with the made up story.
Then there's printed outlets that can't seem to get it right. Like Raleigh's own N&D. Who is responsible for the Dan River coal ash spill? Demon pols who ruled the state for a century. Who does the N&D blame for it? Pat. Why? Because he sat in the chair when the disaster was made public. Until Pat was in the chair, the disaster was known to be happening, but lib pols, lib appointees, and 'news' media covered it up. Cuz it was THEIR allies in power and they REFUSE to shine light upon their allies if it would make the allies look bad.
So, where's the problem with fake news? In the fake news outlets like fakebook/twit, or NBC, CNN, N&O, etc? Fix your own house first before you whine about someone elses house. Default lib response is once again proven to be whining! Go back to your safespace!
December 1, 2016 at 7:59 pm
Janice Sutton says:
Roy Cooper was a terrible attorney general for the state. He was derelict in his duties to defend the state against the over-reach of the federal government into our state's rights. We lost our right to control our elections by requiring a voter to show a vlid ID, We lost our right to defend our state constitution on the matter of marriage being between a man and a woman. We will probably lose our right to have our children protected from having to shower with people of the opposite sex. If he can find some common ground with the legislature, he better take that opportunity to get something done, or he will be just as useless to our state as Obama has been to our nation for the last eight years. As far as finding agendas to push, have you not learned anything from this election? We are tired of having agendas pushed on us. Find common ground or get out of town.
